Rite Aid closes down all remaining stores after bankruptcy
Pharmacy chain filed for bankruptcy twice in 2 years before closing all remaining stores
Rite Aid officially closed all of its remaining stores on October 4, 2025, marking the end of the pharmacy chain’s 63-year history. The company announced its final store closures on its website after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in May 2025, leading to the nationwide shutdown.
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Date: The final stores closed on or around October 4, 2025.
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Reason: Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy in May 2025, which forced the company to liquidate its assets and close its remaining locations.
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Prescription transfers: Customer prescriptions were transferred to other pharmacies, including CVS, Walgreens, Albertsons, and Kroger, as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
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Company statement:The company issued a statement on its website thanking customers for their years of support and providing information for former customers to obtain their pharmaceutical records.
- Initial bankruptcy: Rite Aid first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2023. It emerged as a private company in September 2024 but continued to face financial challenges.
- Second bankruptcy: After struggling to keep stores stocked, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a second time in May 2025.
- Asset sales: In May 2025, Rite Aid announced it would sell the pharmacy prescriptions from most of its stores to competitors like CVS, Walgreens, Albertsons, and Kroger.
- Final store closures: The final sales and closures were completed by early October 2025, with an announcement from the company that all stores were officially closed.
Pharmacy chain Rite Aid closed all of its locations after filing for bankruptcy twice in less than two years.
The retailer posted a brief announcement on its website.
“All Rite Aid stores have now closed,” the site states. “We thank our loyal customers for their many years of support.”
The website offers former customers their pharmacy and immunization history, as well as assistance with finding pharmacies that their prescriptions were transferred to.
Customers inside a Rite Aid store in New York, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The drugstore chain operated in the U.S. for more than 60 years. The company had opportunities to merge with Walgreens in 2017 and Albertsons in 2018, but rejected both, according to Investopedia.
Back in 1987, Rite Aid was the largest drug store chain in the U.S. with more than 2,000 stores, according to the financial media website.
A Rite Aid store in Oak Park, Michigan, U.S., on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (Emily Elconin/Bloomberg / Getty Images)
The pharmacy chain was driven to file for bankruptcy protection in 2023 due to mounting debt and sluggish sales from heightened competition coupled with hundreds of lawsuits connected to its role in the opioid crisis. Rite Aid quickly initiated a store optimization plan that involved immediately closing 154 of its 2,284 stores.
Over the course of the restructuring, Rite Aid closed hundreds of additional stores, leaving it with a footprint of about 1,245 locations by the time of its second bankruptcy filing in May 2025.
A person leaves a Rite-Aid on Oct. 16, 2023, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
Its first restructuring reduced the U.S. pharmacy chain’s debt, although it still had $2.5 billion in liabilities when it emerged as a private company owned by its lenders in 2024. The company also failed to address its long-term business challenges of inflationary pressures and increased competition by pharmacy chains Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Amazon. source